


The Signs of Change

by Argyle_S



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Don’t copy to another site, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Light Angst, Mutual Pining, Pining, Romance, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:43:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23926342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argyle_S/pseuds/Argyle_S
Summary: Nia has noticed a change in her and Kara's relationship.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Nia Nal
Comments: 12
Kudos: 114





	The Signs of Change

**Author's Note:**

> Unbetaed

Nia wasn’t sure what it was, but she knew something had changed between her and Kara.

The first sign had been the hugs. Hugs had always come easily for them. The first had been the night Kara revealed that she was Supergirl. When they had gotten back to National City, Kara had insisted on walking Nia to her door. As they said goodbye, Kara had stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Nia, and Nia had hugged her back almost on reflex.

There has been something about the hug that Nia had never been able to put into words. A feeling it created itself her that she could only describe in parts. It made her feel safe and warm and cherished and seen and at home, but those were only parts of it. The way Kara held her made the world go away, taking the pain of her mother’s death, and her sister’s words, and the sight of her hometown filled with bigots and burning to the ground go away with it, and Nia’s only thought was that she wanted to stay there forever.

It was the first moment that Nia realized that she might be a little bit in love with Kara, and as they worked together over the days and weeks and months that followed, as they wrote articles and trained and fought bigots and criminals and killers, the desire to say something was overwhelming, but she held her tongue. Kara was her friend. Kara was her mentor. Kara was her idol. And just her luck, Kara was straight.

She threw herself at Brainy, because he was there, and he was cute, and it was hard not to fall for him a little bit. Especially when he said he loved her. It didn’t make her feelings for Kara go away, but it did give her someone who she loved, and who loved her in return, and who she was able to express those feelings for. She loved Brainy, and he kept her from falling into the emotional hell that was being in love with a straight girl.

Then Crisis happened, and the first time Kara hugged her afterwards left bruises. Bruises Nia was careful to never, ever mention to Kara, but bruises non the less. After that first hug in a Post Crisis Universe, every hug that followed was different. There were no more bruises, however unintentional the first ones were. Instead, Kara held her like she was the most precious and delicate thing in the world. The night Brainy broke up with her she had cried in Kara’s arms for hours. After she’d put Yvette’s attacker away, Kara had held her on the balcony at CatCo, and Nia could feel a tension between them she didn’t understand at all, but she had looked at Kara after it was over, and something shifted between them.

The second sign that something had changed between them was the looks. The way Kara had looked at Nia had always been different. There had always been an intensity there. It reminded her most days of the way Cat had looked at her, like she was expecting Nia to perform some miracle, and had every confidence she would. It should have been a little disconcerting, and from anyone else, it probably would have been, but from Cat, and especially from Kara, it had just made her feel confident and powerful. It had reminded her that these two amazing women had faith in her.

After that night on the balcony, Kara didn’t look at her the same way anymore. She didn’t look at her like she expected Nia to perform a miracle, she looked at Nia like Nia was the miracle. She would see tension in Kara’s shoulders after a confrontation with Lex, or a scowl on her face after Andrea had handed her another assignment that should have gone to some first year stringer with a particular interest in dog weddings, rather than a senior reporter with a Pulitzer under her belt, but then Kara would look up at her, and the tension and the scowl would just sort of melt away, replaced by a smile that Kara couldn’t seem to fight, even if it was tinged with just a bit of sadness that Nia didn’t quite understand. The look reminded Nia a little bit of the expression Kara always got when she’d finished all her food and was looking at the last few bites on someone else’s plate.

The third sign that something had changed between them was the touches. Kara had always been tactile. A touch on the shoulder, a hand in the small of the back, a shoulder bump in the elevator. Nia had gotten used to the way Kara touched her. She’d come to rely on it, to need the contact to ground her on days when the job or the mask got to be too much. It was always casual and friendly, the same way Kara touched Alex or Kelly or J’onn.

The touches changed around the same time as the looks. The contact would linger just a moment longer, almost as if Kara had to remind herself to take her hand away. The touches were softer, not hesitant, but more like Kara was taking in the details, the fabric of Nia’s shirt or dress, the softness of her skin. There was an intimacy to it, one that Nia began to crave the longer it went on.

The fourth sign that something had changed between them was food. Nia had gotten used to eating with Kara. They spent so much time together between CatCo and Superhero duties that it was easier to just go to lunch, or grab dinner together. Nia had gotten used to Kara’s appetite over the time they’d known each other, the way she was always hungry, her yellow sunlight enhanced metabolism burning fuel faster than she could consume it some days. Nia wasn’t even sure if Kara was aware of it, but Kara guarded her food the way a starving dog would guard its bowl.

When Nia mentioned one night at dinner how good Kara’s desert looked, a fresh from the oven brownie topped with vanilla ice cream and warm apple pie filling looked, Kara had smiled and cut a huge bite of the desert with her spoon, and held it out for Nia. Nia had been both stunned and flattered, and she’d leaned in, taking the offered bite, and moaning at how good it was. After that night, the two of them sharing food because common place. A spoon full of desert here, a fork full of entrée there. Alex fell off the couch one night when Kara picked up the last pot sticker in her chopsticks and held it out for Nia. Nia had blushed a little, because it was the first time Kara had fed her in front of someone else, but it didn’t stop her from leaning in and taking the offered morsel.

Something had changed between Nia and Kara, and Nia wasn’t sure what it was. She thought she knew, she hoped she knew. The signs all seemed to point in one direction and she wanted to believe she was reading them the right way, but a little voice in her head kept telling her she was wrong, that Kara was straight, that she was just being friendly, that Nia was reading what she wanted to see into it, because she couldn’t even pretend she didn’t love Kara.

She was afraid that if she said something, if she told Kara how she felt and she was wrong about what the signs meant, that she might lose her. It was a nearly overwhelming fear, because Nia didn’t think she could take having her heart broken twice in the same year. So she waited, and she held back, looking for some proof, hoping Kara would be the one to say something. She held back, until the day Lex Luthor won.

None of them had seen it coming. Lena had switched sides near the end, and it had given them a false confidence. The fact that they had always won before had made them think they would win this time. But in the end, Lex had come out on top, and it had left them all a little broken, but Kara more so than most. Nia watched her, as they huddled in the Tower, licking their wounds and trying to process the fact that Brainy was on Lex’s side. She watched as Alex and Kelly and J’onn and Lena had tried to comfort Kara, only to be rebuffed in turn, but she thought she might have something to offer that they didn’t. If she was right. If the signs she thought she saw were actually there.

As she walked up the stairs to the balcony, she felt everyone’s eyes on her, and she felt afraid. Afraid she was wrong, afraid that Kara didn’t want her the way she wanted Kara, afraid she was about to make a mistake and hurt the woman she loved more than she was already hurting. But she took a bit of advice Kara had given her not long after they met.

Acknowledge the fear, then kick its ass.

Kara turned, and Nia could see it in her face, that Kara was getting ready to tell whoever it was behind her to go away, but the words died on Kara’s lips, and Nia saw a little of the pain ease out of Kara’s expression. Kara held out her hand, but Nia didn’t take it. She stepped past it and wrapped her arms around Kara. She swallowed her fear and leaned in, covering Kara’s lips with her own and kissing her the way she’d wanted to for over a year.

For a moment, Kara just stood there, but then Nia felt strong arms wrap around her, and then Kara kissed her back. It started slow and gentle, but it quickly became frantic and needy. Kara clung to her like a lifeline, and Nia held on to Kara like she was the one thing in the world Nia couldn’t stand to lose.

When the kiss was over, Kara pulled back and looked at her.

“Why now?” she asked.

“I wasn’t sure if I was reading things right,” Nia said.

“I wasn’t sure how I could be more obvious,” Kara said.

“Well, you are a reporter,” Nia said. “You could have used your words.”

Kara laughed for the first time in days and leaned into to kiss Nia again.

Something had changed between Nia and Kara, and if the kissing was a sign of things to come, then Nia couldn’t be happier.


End file.
